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Figure Skating: Skate America


vagansmom

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Hmm I just wanted to clarify that the Protopopovs are pair skaters while Kimova/Ponomarenko and Usova/Zhulin were competing in ice dancing in the early 90's. The Protopopovs were already pro at that time. I wasn't until later that Usova teamed up with Platov (who used to compete with Gritchuk until late 90's) as pros.

Zhulin is now coaching/coreographing. Last season he was coaching Tatiana Navka and her partner. (Who were mentioned here before)

Are you following me :sweating:

In the 90's there were also another very lyrical Russian couple that did pairs skating: Natalia Muskitienok (spelling?) /Dimitriev. Dimitriev continued the amateur skating later and won the Olympic gold with Kazakova (in 1998?? don't remember)

Musikteinok/Dimitriev used to compete against Brasseur/Eisler (Canadians)

I recently saw an old video-tape of the Muskitienok/Dimitriev performance from 1990 or 1991 and it was a breathtaking performance. That was lyrical....

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I mentioned the ice dancers because I wasn't sure whether Paul had seen pairs. He mentioned a death spiral, but I was not aware that a death spiral is ever done in second position, so I thought he might have been describing something some ice dancers had done.

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Zhulin is now coaching/coreographing. Last season he was coaching Tatiana Navka and her partner. (Who were mentioned here before)

Zhulin is not only coaching and choreographing for his wife, Tatiana Navka, and her dance partner Roman Kostomarov, but he's also coaching Men's singles skaters Alexander Abt and Vakhtang Murvanidze, both very artistic skaters. Navka and Kostomarov just won Skate Canada, beating last year's European silver and World bronze medallists, Albena Denkova and Maxim Staviyski.

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Just had to throw in a few points here since skating is my "thing" (job, hobby, passion, you get the idea)

- Ice dance boots are cut down lower but then we usually put this rubber material at the back of the skate to replace what we cut off. But cuting down your boot is not always the answer to pointed toes. Sasha Cohen has normal sized boots at the back and she has the best toe point in the business (granted, toe point in skating and "good" toe point are very seperate things ;) )

- Skaters are getting more and more injured these days because of the increased hours that they practice and the amount of pounding that thier body takes. Sasha was out for half a season with a very bad back. I believe she had stress fractures. Tara Lipinski has such bad hips that she has basically retired from skating all together. She had a hip surgery a year after the Olympics in 98 (bascially a hip replacement) and just last year had surgery on the other hip (same thing). I don't think we'll see her back out there again. Her body just can't handle it anymore.

Alexei Yagudin also just retired from amateur skating (he did his farewell at Skate Canada... the Russin federation was VERY unhappy about the fact that he didn his farewell in Canada and not Russia) Such a loss, but again, he had to retire because of injuries.

- Sarah Hughes has quit skating and is now at Yale, I doubt that we will even see her on the professional tours for the next few years, if ever. Not becasue of injury, but just becasue she's ready to move on.

-(there were more things I wanted to put my two cents in about, but I've forgotten what my so very very important thoughts were, lol)

lunatick

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Interesting comments. I'd always wondered about Tara Lipinski's public statement about retiring from amateur competition because she wanted to spend more time with her father from whom she'd been separated during much of her training. Then, she proceeded to tour throughout the U.S. as a professional (close to her father?). When the hip story came out, it made sense.

There have been far too many injuries in recent years for these to be flukes. Elvis also suffering so much and unable to proceed as planned in his career. I recall watching Kurt Browning getting a massage back stage, in obvious agony, and saying that the hip that was being worked on wasn't even the "bad" one. Granted, he is somewhat older than the others, but you still have to wonder what is going on.

Sarah Hughes looked considerably heavier the last time I saw her in competition. It interfered with her line, for me, anyway.

Maybe Kwan's not getting into triple triple combos, and trying to maintain a life in college and with her personal relationship, has kept her in good stead.

I wish Mr. Button could/would visit this board, esp. since he was the first to land a triple in competition. He could shed some additional light on the injury problems, I'm sure.

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